WEBVTT - What Must Be Done? The Battle Against Fascism 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:05.560 Colz Media. 0:00:06.480 --> 0:00:08.959 Hey everyone, Robert here. The episode you're about to listen 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:13.280 to is a keynote speech I gave at a symposium 0:00:13.360 --> 0:00:17.960 on combating Authoritarianism and Preserving Democracy for the Japanese American 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:21.880 National Museum in Los Angeles, California. So you'll get to 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:25.640 hear the speech that I gave them about what's necessary 0:00:25.800 --> 0:00:28.560 in order to deal with this new authoritarian way of 0:00:28.600 --> 0:00:30.960 overtaking the country. And then there's a Q and A 0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:34.120 with me afterwards where I sit down with Anne Burrows, 0:00:34.120 --> 0:00:37.800 who's the President and CEO of the Japanese American National Museum. 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:42.120 She's also an internationally recognized leader in human rights and 0:00:42.200 --> 0:00:45.040 social justice. She's a chair on the board of directors 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:48.360 for Amnesty International. She was jailed as a political prisoner 0:00:48.360 --> 0:00:51.159 for fighting apartheid in her native South Africa. She's a 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:53.960 pretty cool person. So that is the episode you're about 0:00:54.000 --> 0:00:54.400 to listen to. 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:06.199 Keynote is going to ask us some difficult truths. Authoritarianism, 0:01:06.800 --> 0:01:11.560 as has so often been said, rarely announces itself all 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:17.160 at once. It takes root quietly in policies that silence dissent, 0:01:17.640 --> 0:01:22.280 in narratives that divide, and in systems that normalize repression 0:01:22.920 --> 0:01:26.520 until it feels ordinary, and when we get to that 0:01:26.680 --> 0:01:34.759 ordinary point, it's complicity. So I know that our next 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:40.880 keynote is going to challenge us. We can trust that 0:01:40.920 --> 0:01:46.160 he will be provocative. We can trust that he will 0:01:46.200 --> 0:01:53.080 say some very strong things and it will be fantastic. So, 0:01:53.440 --> 0:01:59.360 without blabbering anymore, I am going to welcome Robert Evans, 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:03.560 who is a journalist and author and the host of 0:02:03.640 --> 0:02:08.640 the enormously popular and influential podcasts Behind the Bastards and 0:02:08.720 --> 0:02:12.320 It Couldn't Happen Here. He's also the author of a 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:16.160 brief History of Vice and After the Revolution. He has 0:02:16.240 --> 0:02:21.480 that rare ability to connect history, power and lived experience, 0:02:21.560 --> 0:02:24.680 and he will certainly talk to you about his lived 0:02:24.720 --> 0:02:27.880 experience in the trenches of Portland, and he'll dir it 0:02:27.960 --> 0:02:31.000 in a way that's unsettling. As I've said, he's going 0:02:31.080 --> 0:02:34.240 to challenge us, He's going to be provocative. But that's 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:38.480 why we've asked him to provide this keynote. So Robert, 0:02:38.800 --> 0:02:39.840 please come on up. 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:41.079 It's your moment. 0:02:47.320 --> 0:02:49.239 Thank you so much for that, and thank you all 0:02:49.320 --> 0:02:51.960 for being here. I am going to try to follow 0:02:52.000 --> 0:02:55.040 that up as best I can. Once the teleprompter's ready here. 0:02:58.000 --> 0:03:00.120 So a couple of days before I sat down to 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:03.079 write the speech that I'm delivering now, a friend came 0:03:03.120 --> 0:03:05.239 to me and asked if I had advice on which 0:03:05.280 --> 0:03:07.519 kind of gas mask she should purchase for her four 0:03:07.600 --> 0:03:12.000 year old daughter. As was noted earlier, we live in Portland, Oregon, 0:03:12.080 --> 0:03:15.040 and while my friend wasn't planning to attend any protests, 0:03:15.080 --> 0:03:18.280 certainly not with her daughter in tow, she was keeping 0:03:18.360 --> 0:03:22.440 up with developments in Minnesota, where ice officers had just 0:03:22.480 --> 0:03:25.280 shot a man they described as Venezuelan in the leg 0:03:25.440 --> 0:03:28.480 and then tear gased a neighborhood. One resident tried to 0:03:28.520 --> 0:03:31.560 get his family, which included small children and a newborn, 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:34.400 out of the area, but they were gassed in their car, 0:03:34.639 --> 0:03:38.360 and then, for good measure, ice officers hurled flashbangs into 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:41.760 the vehicle. His six month old infants stopped breeding, and 0:03:41.800 --> 0:03:44.360 he had to beg repeatedly before officers would let an 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:49.040 ambulance in to resuscitate his baby. The child was fine now, 0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.000 so my friend was right to fear that her little 0:03:52.000 --> 0:03:54.440 girl might get gassed for nothing more than existing in 0:03:54.480 --> 0:03:58.920 the wrong neighborhood. Questions like this aren't theoretical to thousands 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:02.280 of American parents now, and they aren't theoretical to me. 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:04.760 I was tear gassed more than one hundred times in 0:04:04.800 --> 0:04:06.920 twenty twenty, and I spent a fair amount of time 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:09.880 pulling children and other civilians out of cars that had 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:12.760 the bad luck to exist on the same city block 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:15.000 as a man with a badge and a grenade launcher. 0:04:15.720 --> 0:04:18.360 And so it bugs me just a little when I 0:04:18.400 --> 0:04:21.800 see Governor Walls tell protesters to stay peaceful and not 0:04:21.920 --> 0:04:26.039 take the bait. In fact, I'm left asking what do 0:04:26.160 --> 0:04:29.919 we think the bait is here? As best as I 0:04:30.000 --> 0:04:33.839 can figure it, armed and armored police officers, blind firing 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:37.800 chemical weapons that civilians is bait, while any response from 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:41.120 those civilians beyond packing up and going home is taking 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:44.880 said bait. Throwing back tear gas containers or anything else 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:48.920 is somehow an escalation. So is standing against a riot 0:04:48.920 --> 0:04:51.360 line with a gas mask and a homemade shield to 0:04:51.400 --> 0:04:55.280 stop your neighbor from getting deported. Any act of resistance, 0:04:55.320 --> 0:04:59.200 big or small, is all the justification federal agents need 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:02.400 to deploy more of the violence they were already using. 0:05:03.040 --> 0:05:05.600 It's a neat little rhetorical game that liberals have let 0:05:05.680 --> 0:05:10.040 themselves become trapped inside. Playing that game lets them avoid 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:14.880 answering one supremely ugly question. If your enemy controls the 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:18.480 police and the military, and they've promised to destroy you, 0:05:19.120 --> 0:05:23.800 what does fighting back even mean. Up until the present moment, 0:05:23.960 --> 0:05:27.560 the answer given by prominent liberals has generally been you 0:05:27.680 --> 0:05:31.040 fight by voting, or by making your voice heard, or 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:34.039 something similar. I have a good friend who tried to 0:05:34.040 --> 0:05:36.880 make her voice heard in twenty twenty. She is now 0:05:36.920 --> 0:05:40.279 in early menopause in her twenties, after being rendered sterile 0:05:40.320 --> 0:05:43.640 by chronic tear gas exposure. None of the officers who 0:05:43.680 --> 0:05:46.520 poisoned her, or thousands of other Portlanders ever saw a 0:05:46.600 --> 0:05:51.240 day behind bars. That would be wrong. They enjoy qualified immunity. 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:54.799 They're doing an important job one every person can agree 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:58.720 needs to be done. The year my friend was gassed repeatedly, 0:05:59.200 --> 0:06:01.880 the highest paid Portland police officer was a man who 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:05.039 had been caught and briefly punished for maintaining a shrine 0:06:05.080 --> 0:06:08.400 to the dead men of the waffen Ss on city property. 0:06:08.960 --> 0:06:12.040 The Portland Police Union, the first police union in the country, 0:06:12.520 --> 0:06:15.320 sued for him to be reinstated and to ensure that 0:06:15.400 --> 0:06:18.000 he faced no punishment for this and was brought back 0:06:18.080 --> 0:06:21.440 with full pay and benefits. So when you hear stories 0:06:21.839 --> 0:06:25.360 of Homeland Security hiding Nazi songs and the recruiting ads 0:06:25.360 --> 0:06:29.880 for ICE, remember it's not just an ICE problem. And 0:06:29.960 --> 0:06:33.440 yet some liberals and progresses will tell me state and 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:37.720 local police aren't the enemy. ICE is just an aberin agency, 0:06:37.960 --> 0:06:41.400 and surely there's some democratic cheat code we can use 0:06:41.480 --> 0:06:43.960 to get the good guys in blue to help us 0:06:43.960 --> 0:06:48.719 take them down. So much of the unchecked authoritarian nightmare 0:06:48.760 --> 0:06:51.640 currently rampaging through our streets is the product of a 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:56.560 system that views policing as sacred, officers as infallible, and 0:06:56.720 --> 0:07:01.400 protest as inherently suspicious and dangerous. This is the standard line, 0:07:01.520 --> 0:07:04.120 even within the halls of power in the Democratic Party, 0:07:04.160 --> 0:07:06.680 and it is part of why regular young people in 0:07:06.720 --> 0:07:14.880 this country hate elected Democrats. The people out, thank you, 0:07:15.360 --> 0:07:18.520 The people out in Minneapolis battling riot lines and sub 0:07:18.640 --> 0:07:22.280 zero weather. No, there's no help coming. The cavalry does 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:24.960 not exist, and so they've had to build their own 0:07:25.040 --> 0:07:28.680 architecture of resistance off and on the fly. Since immigrants 0:07:28.720 --> 0:07:31.840 and other people being targeted by ICE can't safely shop 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:35.640 local businesses like Rectangle spelled like wreck is in a 0:07:35.680 --> 0:07:38.960 car wreck pizza, have raised tens of thousands of dollars 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:42.640 to buy and distribute food and other necessities. Gathering and 0:07:42.720 --> 0:07:47.280 handing out donated groceries feel safe, peaceful, and legal, but 0:07:47.360 --> 0:07:51.640 that's not how ICE treats it. Rectangle's fundraising campaign earned 0:07:51.640 --> 0:07:54.120 them a visit from armed ICE agents, who, for the 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:58.200 account of co owner Brianna Evans no relation, stormed up 0:07:58.200 --> 0:08:01.280 on our door to try to get in. Thankfully, members 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:03.880 of the neighborhood had been standing guard. They were able 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:06.400 to raise a significant force of locals to swarm and 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:09.120 chase off Ice who tried to guess the neighborhood as 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:11.560 they were leaving, only to have their munitions kicked back 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:14.680 at them. This is one small example of the kind 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:17.280 of networks of aid and resistance that are evolving on 0:08:17.320 --> 0:08:20.480 the ground right now as I speak. Another example that 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:23.480 arose in the wake of Renee Goods murder is ice Watch, 0:08:23.680 --> 0:08:27.480 an informally organized network that activates members of the community 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:31.000 when ICE shows up in their area. The logic behind 0:08:31.000 --> 0:08:33.520 ice Watch is that these federal agents will be less 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:36.600 likely to engage in extreme acts of violence while surrounded 0:08:36.640 --> 0:08:39.480 by crowds of citizens following them and trying to wear 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:42.760 them down with shame. This is a good tactic, and 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:46.080 we here might rightly consider it a non violent tactic. 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:50.520 But the federal government does not remember Renee Good was 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.800 shot and killed for participating in exactly this kind of activism. 0:08:55.480 --> 0:08:59.000 Through mouthpieces like Stephen Miller, the Trump administration has made 0:08:59.000 --> 0:09:02.840 their stance their clear. Anyone impeding the actions of law 0:09:02.880 --> 0:09:06.280 enforcement is a terrorist. Waving a sign or filming an 0:09:06.280 --> 0:09:08.840 ICE agent makes you just as much a terrorist as 0:09:08.880 --> 0:09:11.920 someone who breaks a window or throws a rock. You 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:15.920 cannot be so well behaved and appropriate in your resistance 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:19.440 that this government will not consider you a valid target. 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:23.160 And yet again and again, I see no spine or 0:09:23.200 --> 0:09:25.920 backbone from the men setting themselves up as the future 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:29.920 of resistance to Trump. Gavin Newsom can't even stick to 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:32.360 his own guns. In his own podcast on whether or 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:36.800 not ICE is terrorizing Americans, Senator Corey Booker's big recent 0:09:36.840 --> 0:09:40.520 suggestion was more training for ICE agents, as if the 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:44.560 men brutalizing our neighbors aren't doing exactly what they trained 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:49.000 to do. About a year after Joe Biden's inauguration, I 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:51.800 found myself up in the woods of rural Washington, an 0:09:51.840 --> 0:09:55.000 hour or so outside of Seattle, doing firearm training with 0:09:55.040 --> 0:09:57.760 a group of leftists side met during the twenty twenty protest. 0:09:57.840 --> 0:09:59.960 And I know that kind of thing makes a lo 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:03.480 lot of people here uncomfortable, and I'm afraid a number 0:10:03.480 --> 0:10:06.199 of things about our shared future might make you uncomfortable. 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:09.400 During a break in the activity, I sat down for 0:10:09.440 --> 0:10:11.360 a smoke with a guy who'd spent the last several 0:10:11.440 --> 0:10:13.719 years teaching himself to be an armor or someone who 0:10:13.760 --> 0:10:17.439 repairs and maintains firearms. As he'd gained skill with this, 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:20.640 he'd started to take his grade school aged daughter out shooting. 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:22.840 He didn't like that, he felt like he had to 0:10:22.880 --> 0:10:25.480 do this, but as he informed me, I don't know 0:10:25.559 --> 0:10:27.360 that she won't have to fight for her right to 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:30.839 be treated like a human being. Hearing that, I thought 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:33.000 back to a woman i'd met a few years earlier 0:10:33.280 --> 0:10:36.440 in the bad lands of rural Syria. She'd been held 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:39.240 as a slave by ISIS militants for two years, forced 0:10:39.280 --> 0:10:41.800 into the kind of life that I hope is unimaginable 0:10:41.800 --> 0:10:44.760 to anyone sitting in this room. One night, as the 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:48.679 Kurdish dominated militias of the SDF advanced on Isa's positions, 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:52.040 she managed to escape. After a harrowing journey on foot, 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:54.560 she found her way to the sdf's lines, where the 0:10:54.600 --> 0:10:57.040 first person she saw was a fighter from an all 0:10:57.080 --> 0:11:00.480 female unit holding an AK forty seven. She made the 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:03.559 decision to join up herself that very moment. She wanted 0:11:03.600 --> 0:11:06.000 training in a gun of her own, because then, she 0:11:06.080 --> 0:11:10.040 informed me, no man could ever own her again. Now, 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:13.560 politics isn't supposed to work that way in the United States. 0:11:13.600 --> 0:11:16.439 People should not need to use weapons to defend their 0:11:16.440 --> 0:11:19.840 most basic civil rights. But can you look at the 0:11:19.880 --> 0:11:22.960 mobs of armed men breaking into homes and businesses in 0:11:22.960 --> 0:11:26.880 Minneapolis and elsewhere, many sporting Nazi tattoos to go along 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:30.800 with their badges, and tell me definitively that we're going 0:11:30.840 --> 0:11:34.200 to get through this without a fight. At the end 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:36.440 of the Second World War, as the dead were counted 0:11:36.480 --> 0:11:39.000 to cries of never again, an attempt was made to 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:42.760 create a rules based international order built around the bones 0:11:42.760 --> 0:11:44.720 of the last failed attempt to do so at the 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:47.680 end of the First World War, And as we stand 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:51.040 here in twenty twenty six, potentially looking at a US 0:11:51.040 --> 0:11:56.000 invasion of Greenland, watching military helicopters circle American cities while 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:59.040 secret police snatch victims from their families and haul them 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:03.000 off to camps and deffortation facilities. We must admit that 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:05.960 this second attempt to create a rules based international order 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:10.760 is failing as well. We and our predecessors failed at 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:13.960 building and maintaining a system that would stop all of 0:12:14.000 --> 0:12:17.360 this from happening again. There are many answers to the 0:12:17.440 --> 0:12:20.800 question of how this happened. The fact that the United 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:23.320 States from the jump refused to be bound by the 0:12:23.360 --> 0:12:26.280 same rules we hoped lesser nations would follow was certainly 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:29.760 part of the reason why our insistence that no foreign 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:33.480 court ever judge American politicians or American soldiers was as 0:12:33.559 --> 0:12:37.199 narcissistic as it was insane. The creation of the Department 0:12:37.200 --> 0:12:40.520 of Homeland Security, the ongoing militarization of the border and 0:12:40.600 --> 0:12:44.040 border patrol, the granting of qualified immunity to police across 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.160 the country, these were all further steps on our national 0:12:47.240 --> 0:12:51.280 road to perdition Citizens United. Our refusal to punish Facebook 0:12:51.280 --> 0:12:54.079 executives over the Cambridge Analytica scannal, and our failure to 0:12:54.200 --> 0:12:57.480 charge the people responsible for January sixth with treason are 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:01.079 all further steps on that road. I could talk about 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:03.760 what led us hear for hours, but all that matters 0:13:03.840 --> 0:13:08.319 is this, We the United States are not special. Our 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:11.880 long democratic traditions, great wealth, and high opinion of ourselves 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:26.559 have not protected us. The enemy is that the gates. Now. 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:28.640 I don't mean to act as if all is lost, 0:13:28.920 --> 0:13:31.880 or as if the only path forward is bloody, internesting war, 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:34.920 because I don't believe that the cause of rationality, of 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:38.200 basic human decency still has a lot going for it. 0:13:38.760 --> 0:13:41.960 The vast majority of Americans hate this president, just as 0:13:42.000 --> 0:13:45.360 they despise the Republican Party and the vicious, cruel and 0:13:45.440 --> 0:13:49.200 soulless monster. The Conservative project has proved to be pole 0:13:49.280 --> 0:13:52.360 after poll shows this. We also see it in videos 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:55.520 of grandfathers kicking tear gas cands back at ICE agents 0:13:55.559 --> 0:14:00.240 in Minneapolis. The bad guys are outnumbered. We can't forget this, 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:03.880 and they certainly won't. But the bad guys also have 0:14:04.120 --> 0:14:07.079 guns and the legal right to use them however they want, 0:14:07.240 --> 0:14:10.520 whenever they want, on whoever they want. Just because they 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:13.240 might lose an election doesn't mean they're handing in their 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:16.960 badges or their weapons. So how do you plan to 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:19.640 make them. One thing that gives me a sense of 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:22.240 hope as I look around the country is that increasing 0:14:22.320 --> 0:14:24.920 numbers of liberals and progressives seem to be waking up 0:14:24.960 --> 0:14:28.960 to the idea that this is an existential fight. Perhaps 0:14:29.000 --> 0:14:32.160 the most hopeful thing I've seen recently is that in Minneapolis, 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.600 a coalition of labor unions and community organizations have come 0:14:35.640 --> 0:14:38.800 together to call for a limited general strike that just 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.560 so happens to be today, January twenty third, twenty twenty six. 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:47.480 That's right, for a single day. There will be no work, 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:51.520 no school, no shopping. Now, this is a demonstrative act 0:14:51.600 --> 0:14:53.840 when you might compare to the flexing of a muscle. 0:14:54.360 --> 0:14:57.160 No one involved thinks that one day of striking is 0:14:57.240 --> 0:14:59.960 going to be enough, But nothing less than a general 0:15:00.200 --> 0:15:04.360 strike has the potential to force concessions, even capitulation, from 0:15:04.360 --> 0:15:07.800 the regime, and you have to start somewhere. This is 0:15:07.840 --> 0:15:10.600 another example of an active, peaceful protest that will be 0:15:10.680 --> 0:15:14.640 considered anything but peaceful as soon as the regime feels threatened, 0:15:15.200 --> 0:15:18.400 and people on the ground in Minneapolis know this. Whenever 0:15:18.440 --> 0:15:21.040 I talk to activists, whether they live in Los Angeles 0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:24.640 and Portland, a land of Minneapolis, Philadelphia. I see the 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.760 same thing I saw in people in twenty twenty, a 0:15:27.880 --> 0:15:31.280 grim but very accurate assessment of what this fight is 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:33.960 going to cost them. They are going to lose eyes 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:36.800 and maybe limbs to riot munitions. They and their friends 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:41.120 will be arrested, beaten, possibly tortured, and imprisoned. All of 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:44.760 these things are happening right now to regular people who 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:47.280 have done nothing more than speak up and lend aid 0:15:47.360 --> 0:15:50.480 and comfort to their afflicted neighbors. They are willing to 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:53.240 risk their lives because they know the hour is late. 0:15:54.600 --> 0:15:57.120 I have not seen anything that approaches this level of 0:15:57.160 --> 0:16:01.280 commitment from the liberal intelligencia, from most elects, to Democratic officials, 0:16:01.400 --> 0:16:05.119 or from the party itself. JB. Pritzker calls out accurately 0:16:05.280 --> 0:16:08.080 our present situation as being like the early years of 0:16:08.160 --> 0:16:11.640 the Third Reich, and yet, like every Democrat in power, 0:16:11.720 --> 0:16:16.800 he falls short of elucidating absolution beyond peaceful protest. And 0:16:16.880 --> 0:16:19.000 if I can get only one point across to you, 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:22.240 let it be this. As far as the regime is concerned, 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:25.760 there is no such thing. All dissent is violent. You 0:16:25.880 --> 0:16:28.440 attending the symposium as an act of terrorism, and they 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:30.320 will punish you for it once they get through the 0:16:30.360 --> 0:16:34.120 people they see as more immediate threats. There's a book 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:36.760 I come back to again and again when trying to 0:16:36.800 --> 0:16:39.920 puzzle out my own path forward in these unsettling times. 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:43.560 It's titled They Thought They Were Free? And the author 0:16:43.680 --> 0:16:47.680 was a Jewish American progressive journalist and educator named Milton Meyer. 0:16:48.440 --> 0:16:51.360 Not long after World War Two in the early nineteen fifties, 0:16:51.600 --> 0:16:53.880 he moved to a small German village to get and 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:56.920 know and interview a number of ordinary citizens about their 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:00.680 involvement with the Nazi Party. Meyer call these men and 0:17:00.720 --> 0:17:04.080 women the little Nazis to contrast them from the big 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:07.560 Nazis like Himmler and Heydrich and Gerring. These were not 0:17:07.680 --> 0:17:10.280 people who had been movers and shakers and the party, 0:17:10.440 --> 0:17:14.120 nor had most of them been particularly active or early members. 0:17:14.480 --> 0:17:17.680 They were regular people who had latched onto Nazism late, 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:22.120 but supported it enthusiastically because of the benefits it gave them. 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:24.679 They Thought They Were Free is a chilling read for 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:27.679 a number of reasons, but there's no competition for the 0:17:27.680 --> 0:17:31.040 most frightening passage in the whole work. For Meyer didn't 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:34.000 only interview little Nazis. He sat down with people we 0:17:34.119 --> 0:17:37.880 might call little anti fascists. These were Germans who never 0:17:37.880 --> 0:17:40.679 bought into Nazism. They hated it from the jump. They 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:42.960 even fought it for a time, but they were never 0:17:43.080 --> 0:17:45.919 central organizers or members of the resistance. And when it 0:17:45.960 --> 0:17:48.880 became clear that the Third Reich had taken power, they 0:17:48.920 --> 0:17:52.920 faded into the woodwork to try and stay alive. Meyer 0:17:52.960 --> 0:17:54.960 sat down with one of these people, a friend of 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:57.439 his who worked as a chemical engineer, and asked him, 0:17:57.480 --> 0:18:00.959 one day, tell me, now, how was the world lost. 0:18:02.119 --> 0:18:05.520 Here's how his response started. The world was lost one 0:18:05.560 --> 0:18:08.359 day in nineteen thirty five here in Germany. It was 0:18:08.440 --> 0:18:10.720 I who lost it. And I will tell you how. 0:18:11.000 --> 0:18:13.480 I was employed in a defense plant, a war plant, 0:18:13.480 --> 0:18:16.399 of course, but they were always called defense plants. That 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:18.760 was the year of the National Defense Law, the law 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:21.879 of total conscription. Under the law, I was required to 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:24.359 take an oath of fidelity. I said I would not. 0:18:24.720 --> 0:18:27.320 I opposed it in conscience. I was given twenty four 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:30.040 hours to think it over. In those twenty four hours, 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:34.040 I lost the world. Now, this man, this friend of myers, 0:18:34.440 --> 0:18:37.320 knew that refusing to give the oath wouldn't cost him 0:18:37.359 --> 0:18:39.760 his freedom. But it would cost him his job and 0:18:39.800 --> 0:18:42.320 make it impossible for him to get another. No one 0:18:42.359 --> 0:18:45.639 would hire a Bolshevik, and although he'd never been a Bolshevik, 0:18:45.800 --> 0:18:49.000 once the fascists take over, everyone who isn't a fascist 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:52.119 becomes the worst thing they ever called their enemies. Today, 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:56.400 I guess it would be far left extremists or antifa terrorists. Anyway, 0:18:56.680 --> 0:18:59.680 Meyer's friend explained that he thought he couldn't risk being 0:18:59.720 --> 0:19:02.320 target with that brush, not because he wanted to escape 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:04.359 with his family and get a job elsewhere, but because 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:07.000 he genuinely wanted to stay in Germany and fight the 0:19:07.000 --> 0:19:10.240 good fight. He had many German Jewish colleagues and other 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:12.720 dissident friends he wanted to be able to help, and 0:19:12.760 --> 0:19:15.720 he calculated, quote, if I took the oath and held 0:19:15.720 --> 0:19:18.480 my job, I might be of help somehow as things 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:20.960 went on. If I refused to take the oath, I 0:19:21.000 --> 0:19:23.480 would certainly be useless to my friends. Even if I 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:26.359 remained in the country, I myself would be in their situation. 0:19:27.240 --> 0:19:29.439 And so he decided to take the pledge, making a 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:31.760 decision I think many of us would have made. Telling 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:34.280 himself simply that by saying the words I swear to 0:19:34.359 --> 0:19:37.480 God he was ensuring no human being or government could 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:40.359 override his conscience, and he was as good as his word. 0:19:40.480 --> 0:19:43.479 Through the war years, Meyer's friend helped save many lives, 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:46.200 using his apartment as a safe house for people fleeing 0:19:46.280 --> 0:19:49.600 the Third Reich. That's incredibly admirable. I think we can 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:52.720 all agree. But Meyer's friend felt nothing but shame for 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:55.640 his actions. He said later of the day he took 0:19:55.720 --> 0:19:59.199 the oath. That day the world was lost, and it 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:02.919 was I who lost it. Now, Meyer was confused by this, 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:05.119 saying what I'd imagine most of us would say in 0:20:05.160 --> 0:20:07.600 his position, Well, by taking the oath, you were able 0:20:07.600 --> 0:20:09.840 to save many lives. You were just one man, and 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:12.840 the Third Reich was already in power. What more could 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.440 you have done? Here was his friend's response. Of course, 0:20:16.480 --> 0:20:19.000 I must explain. First of all, there is the problem 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:21.359 of the lesser evil. Taking the oath was not so 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:23.560 evil as being unable to help my friends later on 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:26.159 would have been. But the evil of the oath was 0:20:26.240 --> 0:20:28.879 certain and immediate, and the helping of my friends was 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:31.679 in the future and therefore uncertain. I had to commit 0:20:31.720 --> 0:20:34.560 a positive evil there and then, in the hope of 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:37.800 a possible good later on, the good outweighed the evil, 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:40.919 but the good was only a hope, the evil a fact. 0:20:41.720 --> 0:20:44.040 He went on to insist that if he had refused 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:46.479 to take the oath of fidelity, he could have saved 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:50.320 the people later killed by the Nazi regime. And Meyer responded, logically, 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:53.320 you don't truly believe that your lone refusal could have 0:20:53.359 --> 0:20:56.680 overthrown the Reich in nineteen thirty five, And his friend said, no, 0:20:57.080 --> 0:21:00.560 of course not, but then went on to elaborate, there 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:03.359 I was, in nineteen thirty five a perfect example of 0:21:03.440 --> 0:21:05.840 the kind of person who, with all his advantages in 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:08.879 birth and education and in position, rules or might easily 0:21:09.000 --> 0:21:11.600 rule in any country. If I had refused to take 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:13.920 the oath in nineteen thirty five, it would have meant 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:16.800 that thousands and thousands like me all over Germany were 0:21:16.800 --> 0:21:19.800 refusing to take it. Their refusal would have heartened millions. 0:21:20.000 --> 0:21:22.560 Thus the regime would have been overthrown, or indeed would 0:21:22.560 --> 0:21:25.080 never have come to power in the first place. The 0:21:25.119 --> 0:21:27.520 fact that I was not prepared to resist in nineteen 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:30.359 thirty five meant that all the thousands, hundreds of thousands 0:21:30.480 --> 0:21:33.720 like me in Germany were also unprepared. Each one of 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:36.240 these hundreds of thousands, was like me, a man of 0:21:36.280 --> 0:21:40.280 great influence or of great potential influence. Thus the world 0:21:40.359 --> 0:21:43.840 was lost. Now Meyer still doesn't believe his friend because 0:21:43.840 --> 0:21:46.720 he's bogged down in the historical details, the nitty gritty 0:21:46.760 --> 0:21:49.960 of the rise of fascism. His friend, who lived through that, 0:21:50.400 --> 0:21:53.440 is instead focused on the greater moral and historic truths 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:56.800 behind it. These hundred lives I saved, he told Meyer, 0:21:57.000 --> 0:21:58.960 or a thousand or ten, as you will. What do 0:21:59.040 --> 0:22:02.240 they represent? A little something out of the whole terrible evil, 0:22:02.560 --> 0:22:04.720 When if my faith had been strong enough in nineteen 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:08.160 thirty five, I could have prevented the whole evil. Now 0:22:08.160 --> 0:22:11.520 the faith he's expressing isn't a religious belief per se, 0:22:11.560 --> 0:22:14.399 but rather faith that right and wrong exist, and that 0:22:14.480 --> 0:22:17.800 when people step into our communities hell bent on harming others, 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:21.600 they should be stopped by any means necessary. So Meyer 0:22:21.680 --> 0:22:24.439 asks him, can you imagine anything your society might have 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:27.120 done to sustain your faith, to ensure you and other 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:30.240 Germans like you would have been prepared to resist. Meyer's 0:22:30.240 --> 0:22:34.080 friend realizes he's speaking about education, the very American idea 0:22:34.080 --> 0:22:37.000 that ideologies like fascism thrive in ignorance, and can be 0:22:37.080 --> 0:22:40.119